Oops

Brad sent me a link to this. It’ll probably be taken down soon enough, so a screenshot was in order.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1600781500/

Hope

The Mets have agreed to a trade with the Minnesota Twins to acquire Johan Santana for four prospects, pending the left-hander working out an extension with New York.

The Mets have been granted a 48- to 72-hour window to work out a new contract with Santana.

If New York can work out a contract agreement with Minnesota, the Mets will send outfielder Carlos Gomez and pitchers Phil Humber, Deolis Guerra and Kevin Mulvey to the Twins.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3220894

Edit: I don’t know if he’ll keep his number, but man this looks good:

Rock Band Downloads

How did I miss this last week?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_songs_in_Rock_Band#Downloadable_songs

Review: iPod mini-speaker

One of my few complaints (serious complaints; there are a million minor things that I could bitch about forever, but don’t really matter) about the iPod Touch is that it lacks a speaker. I don’t care about a high quality speaker for music, but it would be nice to be able to play videos or Youtube clips for other people on it, without needing headphones. If you are a loyal fan to apple products, you might also want to check this blog post on the best android emulators for ios devices.

I was searching around for something and came across this: Mini Speaker For Apple iPod, iPhone. My first thought: That thing is probably a piece of shit. My second thought: it’s only $19. So I bought it.

It arrived this week, and is pretty much exactly what it claims to be. The color is more appropriate for an older iPod, and certainly not the Touch or iPhone. Even the iPod classics won’t really even match it anymore, but what it looks like wasn’t really a huge concern for me. On the other hand, I didn’t want it to be off-centered when attached like a lot of other mini-speakers, since the headphone jack isn’t centered on the Touch, so the dock connected instead of headset connector is nice. Of course, that means it’s iPod only and won’t work with other devices, but that’s what I wanted. This way it also uses the line out instead of headphone out.

Now, on the the sound quality. It’s surprisingly good. Obviously, it’s not going to blow you away with amazing sound, but at one step below the maximum volume, music sounds pretty adequate. Since it uses line out, volume is controlled on the speaker, not the iPod. It has two simple up and down buttons. There’s some distortion, and I wouldn’t want to listen to music on it all the time, but for what it is, it works well. It is a stereo speaker, but since it attaches to the bottom of the Touch, which gets turned on its side for video, the sound ends up only coming from one side. Not really a big deal.

The mini-speaker width is the same as the iPod Touch, but it is significantly thicker. I haven’t opened it up to see if it can be crammed into a smaller case, but I might at some point. It’s not a huge issue for me.

And now, a video! This was shot with a point and shoot camera which doesn’t have a great mic, and the sound is coming from the mini-speaker. Fairly impressive, given the equipment involved.



All things considered, I’m happy with the purchase. If I had paid the “regular price” of $60, I probably wouldn’t be, but I don’t think that’s a real price. The “clearance sale” end date seems to just always list today’s date. For $20, the iPod mini-speaker is exactly what I wanted.

for the people who are still alive

I want one of these…

Unfortunately, the chances of it ever being made are pretty much as close to zero as you can get.

USS Ronald Reagan

The aircraft carrier is currently in the Santa Barbara harbor. I went out and did some photography today. I got a few nice shots, but I wasn’t really happy with the results. I might have to go back out tomorrow and try again. It leaves Monday morning.

My favorite shot from the day could have been taken any time. The ship isn’t in the picture.